Bowness has been named associate head coach. Some will see it as an insignificant difference or just semantics, but it's a different dynamic in terms of responsibilities and expectations from "You and you alone are THE head coach, and this man is merely your assistant." They are now both the head coach of the Tampa Bay Lightning. It's different from previous Cooper's position of sole and final authority.

How different? It'll be interesting to see how this dynamic plays out on the ice, that's for sure...especially times of difficulty

I don't know where you found the "associate head coach" wording but TBO has him as an assistant coach and even the link you posted has him as an assistant coach.

The release says Bowness has been a head or assistant coach for 24 years and that he will be an assistant to head coach Jon cooper, it is easy to misread, actually that portion is a terrible piece of writing and should have been caught before it was released.

which in all hieracrchal descriptions that I know using the terms implies a much higher authority as Associate. When I got promoted to Associate Professor it was a much bigger jump than when I had been Assistant Professor... I think it is true for coaching also.

More encouraging was the note that evaluations of the remaining coaching staff with expiring contracts are still ongoing. Including GT coach, therefore I am briefly encouraged and hopeful that change still can occur.

I don't know where you found the "associate head coach" wording but TBO has him as an assistant coach and even the link you posted has him as an assistant coach.

Wow, good eye. As if I didn't even read the article whose link I posted. Unlike some folks I don't make a habitual practice of posting BS as fact (as distinguished sharply from my BS opinions). It's too easy to get the facts right. Let's review:

Tampa Bay Lightning Vice President and General Manager Steve Yzerman announced on Monday that they have added veteran NHL Coach Rick Bowness to the position of Associate Coach, joining Head Coach Jon Cooper’s staff.

After a search of less than a month, the Tampa Bay Lightning on Monday afternoon announced that they had hired former Vancouver associate coach Rick Bowness, where he will join Coach Jon Cooper’s staff as associate head coach – the same position that he had held for the past seven years with the Vancouver Canucks.

The former Vancouver Canucks associate coach was hired for the same position by the Tampa Bay Lightning on Monday, less than two weeks after the Canucks fired head coach Alain Vigneault and his staff of Bowness and assistant Newell Brown.

Bowness, who was fired along with head coach Alain Vigneault and assistant Newell Brown last month, resurfaced Monday with the Tampa Bay Lightning after being hired as an associate coach to Jon Cooper.

etc.
etc.
etc.

General Rule of : Read first. Then post. Especially if challenging someone's information.

[The intellectually rigorous will note that Bowness could in fact be an assistant coach after all, meaning all these sources are wrong, while TBO is the sole shining beacon of Truth; the above merely constitutes substantiation of my earlier post.]